Name: Why Pearls Are So Expensive | So Expensive
Uploaded: 2019-04-07T00:53:06.000Z
Duration: 7 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The Maharajas of India and European queens

adorned themselves with pearls, a symbol of their prestige.

At 2018's Catholic Church-inspired Met Gala,

Uma Thurman's dress had over 3,000 white pearls sewn to it,

It sold for $32 million in a 2018 auction.

But what is it that makes pearls so expensive?

and it has important historical significance,

Tom Moses: Assessing the value of a pearl

is probably the most complex gem to assess.

He's a gemologist at the Gemological Institute of America

colored stone identification, and pearl identification.

the Marie Antoinette pearl is worth so much

They're rare, and this makes them worth more money.

Natural pearls form when some kind of irritant,

makes its way into the shell of a mollusk

the mollusk starts to coat the debris with nacre,

and the irritant grows into a shiny pearl.

Cultured pearls are formed by the same process,

but instead of the irritant entering the shell accidentally,

Pearl farmers insert a piece of mollusk tissue,

This triggers the oyster's defense response,

and it starts coating that piece of tissue with nacre.

The vast majority of pearls on the market

uses X-rays to tell if a pearl is natural or cultured.

Moses: Think about the layers of an onion.

So a natural pearl would have all of those

concentric layers of growth from the very inside out.

Narrator: A cultured pearl, on the other hand,

and a thinner layer of pearl growth around that.

placed in the shell to encourage nacre formation.

Cultured pearls date all the way back to around 500 AD

in China. However, in 1893, the Japanese-born

Kōkichi Mikimoto streamlined the process

and eventually created perfectly round pearls.

He used Akoya pearls, which are the traditional

white round pearls you're probably familiar with.

more commercially available, which made them more affordable

and accessible to people who weren't royalty.

But just because you can grow a cultured pearl

just enough to implant the piece of foreign tissue,

then they put the oysters back in the water

and wait anywhere from six months to two years

that can make one pearl worth more than another.

the more valuable, just like any other gem.

Narrator: The size of the pearl largely depends

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Why Pearls Are So Expensive | So Expensive

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determine

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